Greens: Waste not an energy solution

April 21, 2009

About a chicken manure-to-energy project in Dayton, VA, the director of the Chesapeake Climate Action network told the Washington Post that,

“It does not make sense to try to solve a waste problem as an energy solution. It is an unproven technology that is going to serve only to delay and confuse the real solutions in Virginia, which are energy efficiency and true renewable energy like wind and solar.”

Although the greens fret about chicken manure run-off to the Chesapeake Bay, they oppose a clean and sensible solution to that problem. This should come as no surprise since their real goal is to put Eastern Shore chicken farmers out of business.

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2 Responses to “Greens: Waste not an energy solution”

Using manure as an energy source has some attraction in principle, but to propose this as a means of reducing greenhouse gases, forget it. However simply burning it may not be the best solution. The attraction is that something has to be done with it, and its disposal has a cost, just like garbage. If is is used as a feedstock you can count its normal disposal cost as a “negative value”, while most energy sources have a positive value. Practical economic ideas to use it as replacement energy source should be welcomed, but the greenhouse gas solution is worth approximately ZERO.

Why does burning manure not make sense? I’m not too clear on the science. However, as I understand, when something breaks down, whether by burning or rotting, it releases about the same amount of carbon. This makes sense: 5 lbs of rotting manure contains the same amount of the same material as 5 lbs of burning manure. Now if it doesn’t burn cleanly, then other chemicals are created, like carbon monoxide. But, once again, I though manure burned more cleanly than other combustible fuels. Wind and solar don’t have this problem, but if they were super efficient and cheap, we would be using these for all our energy needs. Such solutions are great, but we should be using all solutions available. I mean, what else are they going to do with all that $**t? People aren’t all going to stop eating chicken. At least not until they introduce Soylent GREEN.